babel

A couple of Germans came in today for a coffee.

Tourists. They weren't quite sure of their way. And they didn't have any loose change: or not the right amount, at any rate.

Their English was hardly great. But they'd twigged what the little word 'exact' meant, though 'fare' was more of a challenge. I think they thought that 'fair' meant something different from having the right coins in your pocket.

I got chatting a bit with them. With the emphasis on the 'bit'. My German isn't great. In fact it's virtually non-existent, gleaned as it is from World War II 'trash mags'.

"Gutten morgen," I ventured.

"Gutten morgen," came back the reply, a glimmer of hope in their eyes. "Sprechen ze deutsch?"

"Nein!"

You see, I told you the conversation didn't last all that long.

I walked them up to the bus-stop. My German wasn't anything like up to explaining where it was and which side of the road they should be on. Easier by far just to take them.

Sometimes it's not always easy to understand what an other person's saying. We speak a different language.

There's a crowd of women who always come in on a Tuesday. This is the crowd who used to meet in a local pub on a Tuesday morning. They love our place, though, now, and wouldn't ever wish to go back.

They're a great bunch and I usually stop to chat with them. Since they were having some strawberry gateau today, I sat and shared a coffee (and the cake) with them all.

It's strange how easily misunderstandings arise. You assume someone else has heard what you have said. But it's not always so.

We'd been chatting away about holidays. But we got our wires rather crossed.

I'd explained how I would be off to Harris to spend my holidays there. But one of the ladies was sure I had said I'd be off to Harrods for my holidays. As if.

It must be the way her mind works or something.

But the conversation continued awhile with the two of us feeding entirely different meanings into the word that when spoken by me was Harris and was heard by her as Harrods.

Which is different, of course. Very different. And extremely confusing.

It sometimes takes a while to figure out just why it's so confusing. We're speaking two different languages. We're pouring two different meanings into the word or words we use.

It wasn't disastrous this morning, of course. We just had a good old laugh when we figured out what the problem was.

I like the ship to the island. She likes to shop: and comes from Ireland.

We sound the same. But we're speaking a different language.

I even spoke a couple of words of French later on at night. In a meeting of 'in-between church' leaders from all over town.

I don't often speak at these meetings. But an issue came up and I felt obliged to clarify just what the issue was: and why it was being handled in the way it was.

It's been a contentious issue down the years among these leaders here. And I've been involved before.

So I said that there was a sense of deja vu. (My French is hardly brilliant, but it can rise to that)

The issue was getting debated at two entirely different levels.

We all spoke English, of course (apart from my stabs at French: and the occasional use of Latin, things like in hunc effectum, to describe a coming meeting, a form of words that dates, sadly like a lot we do, to a former, forgotten age)

But in terms of what we were saying we were really speaking two different languages.

No wonder folk get confused.

And in a sense, no wonder, as well, that one of the leaders resigned. There and then. In public.

I can't say I've seen that before in all the time I've been here. But there was just a hint of deja vu about the thing as well.

Yes, I know what deja vu means. 'Already seen'.

And I know I've just said that I haven't seen that before. But I saw, or I sensed, a thing pretty close to that when big church was meeting a few weeks back.

The hurt and the pain and the feeling of total confusion. The sense of our being on two different planes, and the sense that there was that while we might use the same words we in fact speak two different languages.

The Harris and Harrods confusion.

And people walking out.

It almost happened again last night, later on.

Such feelings of hurt and betrayal, in an entirely different connection, that a man got up and started lambasting another significant leader, alleging a manner of conduct suggestive of bullying force.

I haven't seen that before either, in all of my time here.

But again there was still that sense of deja vu.

What the man was expressing was just what a lot of folk felt when big church met those few weeks back.

And I think I'm seeing a pattern here emerging. Confusion and hurt and division and anger and people beginning to leave.

Babel. In the Church.

The confusion of language all over again. We use the same words while we mean two different things. Harris and Harrods.

It feels like Babel's begun.

'Sin' - to call a spade a spade, and use the word the good book tends to use - 'sin' is essentially disintegrative. It breaks apart what God has joined together. It fragments.

And whenever sin comes in, things start to fragment. Break apart.

Language gets confused. People fall out. The project begins to fragment.

I think that's what I'm seeing now. In big church. And tonight again at in-between church too.

'Sin' is sometimes arrogance. Putting ourselves in the place of God and deciding how things should be done.

'Sin' is sometimes, too, bound up with fear. A lack of trust in God whereby we resort to our own devices to preserve ourselves.

Babel began with that sort of sin. Arrogance and fear.

But Babel has no future. Confusion sets in. The judgment of God.

"Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

Our own little Babel's being built in these days.

And we're starting to see the confusion.

The slow but very steady fragmentation of the ecclesiastial edifice that big church wished to build.

The only future any Babel has is, in the end, confusion and decay.

Deja vu.